


i'm sorry, boris

by everythingFangirl



Series: so call me when the world looks bleak (dream smp oneshots) [9]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, SMPLive, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (kind of), Drabble, Gen, Homesickness, Songfic, just a lot of thoughts thrown at a page I guess, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl
Summary: And even though I'm finished, I'm not quite done with itNo matter how far I run south, I'm always thereOr, Wilbur Soot, and the worlds he's left behind.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: so call me when the world looks bleak (dream smp oneshots) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966438
Comments: 22
Kudos: 185
Collections: Dream SMP Connected Storylines





	i'm sorry, boris

**Author's Note:**

> [Recommended to listen to this while reading](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWJBSqKJmAg), but I can't exactly stop you if you don't want to. Just helps set the mood.
> 
> This is just a late-night drabble, maybe I'll delete it once I wake up with a clear head. Who knows.

_Trains and hugs, planes and sushi._

Wilbur inhales the still air deeply, releases it in a long exhale. With every breath, he wills his heartbeat to slow, his muscles to relax, sinking deeper into his mattress. 

He tries to breathe. He tries not to think.

Dream SMP is quiet. The silence presses against his ears, almost a tangible force. It settles over him like a weight on his chest, claws wrapping around his heart, his lungs, its coldness seeping into his bones. 

The silence is familiar. And he dreads it. 

Sometimes, when the laughter and the crowds and the sheer unfamiliarity of it all overwhelms him, when the homesickness gets too much to bear, he goes back. 

He strolls along bridges, railways overgrown with weeds, crumbling walls marking irrelevant borders. A yellow collar rests on a fence post, flags that have faded with the sunlight still wave in the breeze. He hauls himself into the seat of a plane doomed never again to leave the ground, just to remember how it felt to soar through the air. 

He explores arenas long forgotten by their spectators, long abandoned by their competitors. A scratch left in the stone by an ally’s blade, a scorch mark on the ground from a blast, a certain jump in a course that had claimed uncountable lives, many of them his own. A podium he’d seen friends claim over and over again, swearing that one day, he’d stand upon it too. And yet he never had.

His footsteps echo along stone pathways, sidestepping traps he knows are there without second thought. He sees his reflection on the gold statue that no longer glows, runs his hand along the wheel that no longer spins. Endless tunnels snake through red rock, the heat seeping into the air, scraps of paper scrawled with old words that still make him smile. Melons that have lasted as long as rough-hewn stone. 

And, everywhere, that silence. It caresses his ears like a gentle kiss, embraces him like an old friend, curls around him in comfort as he sits on an outcroppping of rock he built with his own hands, dangling his legs over the endless, empty air, head in his hands as he sobs. 

He came across the word hiraeth, once. Homesickness for a place you can’t go back to.

Even if when goes back, he’s not home. Not anymore. 

Home isn’t the railways, the stadiums, the castles and sheds. It never was.

It was standing back-to-back, holding their breath as the sea claims their home, a layer of wood and glass the only defence between them and the abyss, still believing that, despite everything, they’d pull through. It was plucking items from thin air, expanding their little world block by block, finding any excuse to laugh together despite the threat of the endless emptiness beneath them, trusting each other to catch them if they fell. It was a crowd falling silent as he sits on a stage, strumming familiar chords for the first time in years; the same stage, a single occupant spouting half-jokes in the dark while he can do nothing but laugh. It was standing trial over two men who’d claimed themselves the rulers of the world, knowing nothing about the future they’re about to build together, yet enjoying their company all the same. 

It was always, _always_ the people. 

And now he’s alone. 

Only once, he’s seen another traveler wandering these endlessly quiet worlds. 

He sat among the leaves of the tree that formed the heart of the once-thriving city. A knight watching his fallen kingdom, the home he sparked from nothing and watched crumble to nothing once more, a resigned kind of longing in his eyes. 

When Wilbur climbed up to join him, finding a seat on a branch next to him, he didn’t even say a word. 

“Do you think we could have stopped it?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think we could have kept it going, if we tried?”

“...no. I think it was always going to end.”

Because the collapse is inevitable. The silence is inevitable.

He’s tried to get back home, before. He’s tried to recreate it. 

A new tournament, a new podium, old friends, the warrior and the survivor and the boy. A crown. And a smile wider than any he’s worn in months. 

But it’s not the same. 

A friend visiting his new home, old jokes recycled in a voice that pains his ears until he can barely breathe from laughter, the boy watching in wide-eyed admiration next to that familiar shack of worn stone. 

But it’s not the same. 

“How are you doing? I mean, how you’re really doing, not as a bit.”

“I’m doing good! Better than ever, actually. Just chillin’, you know? You?”

“Me? I’m fine too. I like it here. Feels like home.”

But he’s not fine, is he?

The silence that lays across the Dream SMP is familiar. 

And he dreads the thought of those wooden pathways becoming as overgrown as the railways, the bridges. 

And he dreads the thought of the walls of L’Manberg crumbling just like the arenas, the games, the stages.

He sees the man in the suit and his partner in crime, he sees the kings looking over their city with their friends by their side, he sees the wars and the games and the old song and dance, he sees history repeat itself, 

and he’s powerless to stop it. 

He’s powerless to stop his home from crumbling again.

_My lovers, my colleagues, my best friends and enemies…_

It’s quiet at the end of the world.

_I don’t think I want to leave you._

**Author's Note:**

> I... don't really know what this is? Just a whole lot of projection and venting thrown in the general direction of Wilbur Soot, I guess. I've recently moved countries, and I'm dreading the thought of leaving my home and all my friends behind again. Also drawing from the experience of returning to a place you once called home and no longer finding it familiar. 
> 
> Might write a happier follow-up if inspiration strikes, though. Because there's always good to be found in a new place, too, even if it might not seem that way at first. If there's anyone else reading this who's going through a big life change like this, I wish you the best of luck! I believe in you, and I love you.


End file.
